I know Tyra Banks wants to be the next Oprah Winfrey, but unless she stops pulling her ignorant on-air stunts, she’s never going to come close to having the credibility of Oprah*.

I’m talking about last night’s America’s Next Top Model, which goes with this season’s “conscious” theme:  The aspiring models did a photo shoot where they were supposed to be homeless.

One of the contestants, who used to be homeless herself, captured the irony pretty well—she stated that it was strange to be pretending to be homeless while wearing such nice, expensive clothes.

The whole thing was sick, and ignorant, and actually made a mockery of the plight of the 3.5 million people who experience homelessness in the U.S. in a given year.  Before the judging began, the required shot of Tyra imitating the photo shoot showed her on her back, legs splayed at awkward angles, with a cardboard sign that said “Will Pose for Change.”

As a self-confessed pop-culture junkie who loves free stuff, I've been trolling PopSugar (and it's sister sites) for about a year now. The Sugar blogs just released a new addition to the team: CitizenSugar. It's a news and politics blog which emphasizes the poppy, fun elements of elections and issues.

I think it could be really effective in selling politics to those who might otherwise write it off as boring, as well as providing politicos with  juicy tidbits about Washington's finest.

And here's an awesome incentive to start reading. CitizenSugar is giving away a News Junkie package a week for the next four weeks. According to them:

"The package includes a Sirius radio (it works in your home and in your car), a TiVo HD DVR with a year of service, and the inky-goodness of the New York Times, thumping on your doormat every Sunday for 12 weeks."

If one of you win and I don't, I am going to be mad. But I suppose that's a pretty good tradeoff for Tivo and the Times.

(As this is damn near completely off-topic for the purposes of the site, I'm going to refrain from front-paging this and instead will simply post it to my personal blog) 

Since my wife and I just moved to Alexandria last week, I haven't really had a chance to explore the DC-area social scene.  Last night, she and I changed that at the Potomac Yard theater at 11:59.

Yes, we're total "Harry Potter" nerds, and we freely admit it.

I think I've been to the midnight premiers of all five of the movies so far, including "Chamber of Secrets," which came out while I was doing a stint in rural Michigan and had to drive over an hour and a half through the snow to get to the theater.

Actually, it was my second movie of the day--my wife had an interview in Georgetown, so I had spent about an hour and a quarter watching "Transformers" at the Loew's Theater on K Street at 31st (I had little trouble walking out when she called to tell me her interview was over, though the fight scenes were cool enough, I suppose).